The Office of the Provost and the Office of College Houses and Academic Services (CHAS) are pleased to announce the appointment of three new College House Faculty Masters for the 2006-07 academic year.

William Gipson, University Chaplain and Special Advisor to the President, is the Faculty Master of W.E.B. Du Bois College House. Chaplain Gipson received a Master of Divinity in 1987 from Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School in New York, and came to Penn in 1996. He has nearly 30 years of pastoral experience including an appointment as Associate Dean of Religious Life and the Chapel at Princeton. He currently serves on the Board of Trustees of Smith College. Chaplain Gipson regularly teaches in the departments of religious studies and urban studies, where he provides a broad-ranging intellectual and experiential understanding of the intersection of religion and intellectual life. In his decade at Penn, Chaplain Gipson has served on key University committees that examine issues of diversity and urban civil society.

Dr. J. Sanford Schwartz is the Interim Faculty Master of Fisher Hassenfeld College House. Dr. Schwartz received his M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and joined the department of medicine in 1975. In 1989, he became professor of medicine, health care management, and economics at the Wharton School. From 1989 to 1998, he served as Executive Director of the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics and as the Robert D. Eilers Professor of Health Care Management and Economics. He has received several teaching awards, including the Excellence in Teaching Award and the Outstanding Teacher Award from the School of Medicine and the Provost’s Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching. His chief areas of research include the assessment of medical technology and medical practices, medical decision making, cost-quality tradeoffs in health care, adoption, and diffusion of medical innovation, health economics, and health policy.

Dr. Julie Sochalski is Faculty Master of Hill College House. Since 2002, Dr. Sochalski has been associate professor of nursing. Over the course of her Penn career, she has been Associate Director of the Center for Health Outcomes and Public Policy Research, Senior Fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute for Health Economics, and Research Associate at the Population Studies Center. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1988, with a concentration in health economics and public policy. The recipient of numerous research grants, Dr. Sochalski has also served as a Senior Fellow/Scholar-in-Residence at the Health Resources and Services Administration of the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services in Rockville, Maryland.